“Yeah. Give it to me.”

The directory-assistance operator did. Anne called. The phone rang… rang… rang. The tone of the ring was exactly the same as the tone she got when she dialed the house where her spineless sister had been hiding out for the last thirteen years or so. A person could almost believe they were ringing into the same receiver.

She actually toyed with the idea for a moment before brushing it aside. But giving such a paranoid thought even a moment's house-room was unlike her, and it made her angrier. The rings sounded alike because the same little dipshit backwoods phone company sold and serviced all the phone equipment in town, that was all.

“Did you get her?” Paula asked timidly, coming to the door.

“No. She doesn't answer, the town constable doesn't answer, I think the whole fucking town went to Bermuda. Jesus!” She blew a lock of hair off her sweaty forehead.

“Perhaps if you called one of her friends

“What friends? The loony she's shacked up with?”

“Sissy! You don't know-”

“I know who answered the phone the one time I did get through,” she returned grimly. “After living in this family, it's easier for me to tell when a man's drunk by his voice.”

Her mother said nothing; she had been reduced to wet-eyed trembling silence, one hand hovering at the collar of her black dress, and that was just how Anne liked her.

“No, he's there, and they both know I'm trying to get through and why, and they're going to be sorry they fucked with me.”

“Sissy, I do so wish you wouldn't use that lang-”

“Shut up!” Anne screamed at her, and of course her mother did.

Anne picked up the telephone again. This time when she dialed directory assistance, she asked for the number of the Haven mayor. They didn't have one of those either. There was something called a town manager, whatever the fuck that was.

Muffled little clicks like rats” claws on glass, its the operator looked things up on her computer screen. Her mother had fled. From the other room came the theatrically overblown sobs and wails of Irish grief. Like a V-2 rocket, Anne thought, an Irish wake was powered by liquid fuel, and in both cases the liquid was the same. Anne closed her eyes. Her head thumped. She ground her teeth together -it produced a bitter, metallic taste. She closed her eyes and imagined how good, how wonderful it would be to perform a little surgery on Bobbi's face with her fingernails.

“Are you still there, honey,” she asked without opening her eyes, “or did you suddenly run off to the W. C.?”

“Yes, I have a-”

“Give it to me.”

The operator was gone. A robot recited a number in odd, herky-jerky cadences. Anne dialed it. She fully expected no answer, but the phone was picked up promptly. “Selectmen's. Newt Berringer here.”

“Well, it's good to know someone's there. My name's Anne Anderson. I'm calling from Utica, New York. I tried to call your constable, but apparently he's gone fishing.”

Berringer's voice was even. “He's a she, Miss Anderson. She died unexpectedly last month. The office hasn't been filled. Probably won't be until next town meeting.”

This stopped Anne for only an instant. She focused instead on something which interested her more.

“Miss Anderson? How did you know I was Miss, Berringer?”

There was no pause. Berringer said, “Ain't you Bobbi's sister? If you are, and if you were married, you wouldn't be Anderson, would you?”

You know Bobbi then, do you?”

Everyone in Haven knows Bobbi, Miss Anderson. She's our resident celebrity. We're real proud of her.”

It went through the meat of Anne's brain like a sliver of glass. Our resident celebrity. Oh dear bleeding Christ.

“Good job, Sherlock. I've been trying to reach her on whatever passes for phones up there in Moosepaw County to tell her her father died yesterday and he's going to be buried tomorrow.”

She had expected some conventional sentiment from this faceless official-after all, he knew Bobbi-but there was none. “Been some trouble with the phones out her way,” was all Berringer said.

Anne was again put momentarily off-pace (very momentarily; Anne was never put off-pace for very long). The conversation was not going as she had expected. The man's responses were a little strange, too reserved even for a Yankee. She tried to picture him and couldn't. There was something very odd in his voice.

“Could you have her call me? Her mother is crying her eyes out in the other room, she's near collapse, and if Roberta doesn't get here in time for the funeral, I think she will collapse.”

“Well I can't make her call you, Miss Anderson, can l?” Berringer returned with infuriating, drawly slowness. “She's a grown woman. But I'll surely pass the message along.”

“Maybe I'd better give you the number,” Anne said through clenched teeth. “I mean, we're still here at the same old stand, but she calls so seldom these days she might have forgotten it. It's-”

“No need,” Berringer interrupted. “If she don't remember, or have it written down, there's always directory assistance, ain't there? I guess that's how you must have gotten this'un.”

Anne hated the telephone because it allowed only a fraction of the full, relentless force of her personality to come through. She thought she had never hated it so much as she did at this moment. “Listen!” she cried. “I don't think you understand-”

“Think I do,” Berringer said. This was the second interruption, and the conversation was not yet three minutes old. “I'll go out “fore I have m'dinner and pass it on. Thanks for calling, Miss Anderson.”

“Listen-”

Before she could finish, he did the thing she hated the most.

Anne hung up, thinking she could cheerfully stand by and watch as the jag-off to whom she'd just been speaking was eaten alive by wild dogs.

She had been grinding her teeth together madly.

Bobbi didn't return her call that afternoon. Nor that early evening, as the V-2 of the wake entered the boozosphere. Nor that late evening as it went into orbit. Nor in the two hours past midnight as the last of the wakers stumbled blearily out to their cars, with which they would menace other drivers on their way home.

Anne lay sleepless and ramrod straight in her bed most of the night, wired up on speed like a suitcase bomb, alternately grinding her teeth and digging her nails into her palms, planning revenge.

You'll come back, Bobbi, oh yes you will. And when you do…

When she still hadn't called the next day, Anne put the funeral off in spite of her mother's weak wailings that it wasn't fitting. Finally Anne whirled on her and snarled, “I'll say what's fitting and what isn't. What's fitting is that that little whore should be here and she hasn't even bothered to call. Now leave me alone!”

Her mother slunk away.

That night she tried first Bobbi's number, then the selectmen's office. At the first number the sirening sound continued. At the second, she got a recorded message. She waited patiently until the beep and then said, “It's Bobbi's sis again, Mr Berringer, cordially hoping that you'll be afflicted with syphilis that won't be diagnosed until your nose falls off and your balls turn black.”

She called directory assistance back and asked for three Haven numbers-the number of Newt Berringer, a Smith ('Any Smith, dear, in Haven they're all related'), and a Brown (the number she received in response to this last request was, by virtue of alphabetical order, Bryant's). She got the same siren howl at each number.

“Shit!” Anne yelled, and threw the phone at the wall.

Upstairs in bed, her mother cringed and hoped Bobbi would not come home… at least not until Anne was in a better mood.